Mark Patinkin: When the America’s Cup was a huge deal around here

I was in the waiting area of a car dealership when I saw something unexpected on TV.The America’s Cup.I hadn’t realized the finals had started. Nor had I known the United States was facing New Zealand....

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Posted Sep. 15, 2013 @ 12:01 am

I was in the waiting area of a car dealership when I saw something unexpected on TV.

The America’s Cup.

I hadn’t realized the finals had started. Nor had I known the United States was facing New Zealand. Now I saw if things go badly, it could all end soon.

I say “badly” because New Zealand was trouncing us. The Cup has been ours since Larry Ellison’s Team Oracle beat the Swiss in 2010. But as of a few days ago, it looked like the Kiwis would be taking it back to Auckland.

It’s a best-of-17 series, often with two races a day. First team to 9 wins. The United States was forced to start at minus-2 after a penalty for illegally modifying a warm-up boat.

As I watched, it was about to be New Zealand 4, U.S. minus-1.

But the strangest feeling is that the Cup seemed so far off the local radar.

For decades, it was almost as big a deal in Rhode Island as the Super Bowl. Perhaps it still is for yachtsmen but no longer for most folks.

That’s a big change. Especially for me.

For much of the summer of 1977, when I was based in The Providence Journal’s Newport bureau, I covered the Cup almost every day. That’s the year Ted Turner — known as Blackbeard among the bluebloods — won big.

The whole state was into it because Rhode Island had been the center of the America’s Cup world since 1930, when the New York Yacht Club moved it from Manhattan to off Narragansett Bay.

It’s no exaggeration to say that more than any other event, the Cup put our state on the global map.

Then, in 1983, that ended.

I covered the races again that year when the Aussies beat us in seven races, breaking the longest win streak in sport, 132 years. One reason: They’d come up with secret new technology: a winged keel.

Few believed the Cup would be gone long. The Journal even sent a team to Perth in 1987 to chronicle our presumed revenge. Instead, we were trounced 4-0.

The United States did win the next Cup, but the San Diego Yacht Club sponsored the team and brought the races to California. Since then, the Cup has bounced between the West Coast, New Zealand, Switzerland …

… and now, this summer, it’s off San Francisco, the home waters of Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

I assumed the Cup would now remain in U.S. — and Ellison’s — hands for a long time. Being a driven billionaire, he had the means to mount a challenge that’s now said to cost $100 million for serious contenders.

But it turns out others have means, too.

New Zealand became a major contender by getting the deep-pocketed backing of the United Arab Emirates. Just as the USA boats are “Oracle Team USA,” the Kiwis are “Emirates Team New Zealand.” You can’t call it unfair because everyone now uses global resources. For example, only two Americans were on the 11-man crew of the U.S. boat as I watched. Our skipper and coach are Aussies, and the U.S. team includes plenty of New Zealand nationals.

And then there are the boats. They’re like nothing I remember. They are huge catamarans — a high-tech leap from the 12-meter yachts that dueled for decades off Newport.

I’d known a little about the new cats; a smaller version of the boats — 42 feet long — had raced in Newport a year ago as part of an international circuit called the “America’s Cup World Series.”

But until now, I hadn’t focused on the incredible boats that were in the finals. They are 72 feet long, with sails 13 stories high. As I watched, the boat hulls rose from the water and planed on hydrofoils at double the speed of the wind. They sometimes race at over 50 mph. That’s how fast Jet Skis go if you have the guts to get them screaming.

It’s a slight contrast to what I remember. I was on an observer boat during the 1980 Cup, when the 12-meter yachts went by at what seemed a blistering clip. It turns out they were going about 12 mph. Their maximum was said to be 14.

Rhode Island did make a bid to talk Team Oracle into putting the Cup back in Newport. Had it happened, many here would be following every race as front-page news.

But it didn’t. The result, at least for me, is that this year’s Cup was almost halfway done before I noticed it was going on.

I miss the days when it was in Newport.

And I’m suddenly realizing I miss something else too: When the Cup was a symbol of unrivaled U.S. preeminence.

I’d thought those days were back when Oracle and Ellison launched a U.S. team. He’s the fifth richest man on the planet. I like to think that when an American effort has unlimited resources and a proven leader assembling the best of everything — we can’t lose.

There’s still a chance we can indeed come from behind.

But as of a few days ago, it wasn’t looking good.

And that alone is a reminder that it has become a very competitive world.